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“Mr. George,” said Mum. “Of course. You came to see us in Durham when Gwyneth was born. I remember you too. This is Gwyneth. She’s the Ruby you’re waiting for. ”
“That’s impossible!” said Aunt Glenda shrilly. “Utterly, totally impossible! Gwyneth was born on the wrong day. And two months premature. An underdeveloped little thing. Look at her. ”
Mr. George was already doing just that, scrutinizing me with a pair of friendly, pale blue eyes. I tried to look back with as much composure as possible and hide my discomfort. Underdeveloped little thing! Aunt Glenda must have lost her marbles! I was not underdeveloped. I was nearly five feet six inches tall, my bra was a size-B cup, and much to my annoyance, I was growing out of it!
“She traveled for the first time yesterday,” said Mum. “I just don’t want anything to happen to her. The risk grows with every uncontrolled journey back in time. ”
Aunt Glenda laughed sarcastically. “No one will take this seriously. It’s just another pathetic attempt to make yourself the center of attention. ”
“Oh, do be quiet, Glenda! There’s nothing I’d like more than to keep out of this whole thing, leaving your Charlotte the thankless part of laboratory guinea pig for fanatical mystery mongers and pseudoscientists obsessed with esoteric subjects! But it just so happens that Charlotte is not the one who’s inherited this wretched gene—it’s Gwyneth!” Mum’s expression was one of rage and contempt. I was seeing an entirely new side to her.
Mr. George laughed softly. “You don’t have a very high opinion of us, Mrs. Shepherd. ”
Mum shrugged.
“No, no, no!” Aunt Glenda dropped onto one of the office chairs. “I am not prepared to listen to this nonsense anymore. She wasn’t even born on the right day. And she was premature. ” That bit about me being premature seemed to be especially important to her.
“Shall I bring you a cup of tea, Mrs. Montrose?” Mrs. Jenkins whispered.
“Oh, who wants your stupid tea?” spat Aunt Glenda.
“Would anyone else like some tea?”
“Not me, thank you,” I said.
Meanwhile Mr. George had turned his pale blue eyes back to me. “Gwyneth. So you’ve already traveled in time?”
I nodded.
“Where to, if I may ask?”
“Right where I am now,” I said.
Mr. George smiled. “I mean, to what period did you go back first?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said crossly. “There wasn’t a notice up saying what year it was, and when I asked some people, they wouldn’t tell me. Listen, I don’t want this! I want it to stop. Can’t you make it stop?”
Mr. George did not reply to that. “Gwyneth came into the world two months before her expected date of birth,” he said to no one in particular. “On the eighth of October. I checked the birth certificate and the entry in the civil register myself. And I checked the baby, too. ”
I wondered what there could be to check about a baby. Whether it was real or not?
“She was born on the evening of the seventh of October,” said Mum, and now her voice was trembling a little. “We bribed the midwife to move the time of birth a few hours forward on the birth certificate. ”
“But why?” Mr. George didn’t seem to understand that any more than I did.
“Because … after all that happened to Lucy, I wanted to spare my child such stress. I wanted to protect her,” said Mum. “And I’d hoped she might not have inherited the gene at all and just happened to be born on the same day as the real carrier. After all, Glenda had Charlotte, and everyone’s hopes were pinned on her. ”
“Stop telling lies!” cried Aunt Glenda. “You did it on purpose! Your baby wasn’t supposed to be born until December, but you manipulated the pregnancy and risked a premature birth just to have her born on the same day as Charlotte. It didn’t work out, though! Your daughter was born a day later. ”
“It ought to be fairly easy to prove what you say. We must have the name and address of the midwife in our files,” said Mr. George, turning to Mrs. Jenkins. “It’s important to find her. ”
“There’s no need,” said Mum. “You can leave the poor woman alone. She only took a little money from us. ”
“We just want to ask her a few questions,” said Mr. George. “Mrs. Jenkins, please find out where she lives today. ”
“I’m on my way,” said Mrs. Jenkins, disappearing through the side door again.
“Who else knows about this?” asked Mr. George.
“Only my husband knew,” said Mum, and now there was a tinge of defiance and triumph in her tone of voice. “And you can’t cross-examine him, because I’m afraid he’s dead. ”
“I know,” said Mr. George. “Leukemia, wasn’t it? Tragic. ” He began pacing up and down the room. “When did this start, did you say?”
“Yesterday,” I replied.
“Three times in the last twenty hours,” said Mum. “I’m afraid for her. ”
“Three times already!” Mr. George stopped pacing. “And when was the last?”
“About an hour ago,” I said. “I think. ” Since these events had begun coming so thick and fast, I’d lost all sense of time.
“Then we have a little while to prepare for everything. ”
“You can’t possibly believe this, Mr. George,” said Aunt Glenda. “You know Charlotte. Now look at this girl and compare her with my Charlotte—do you seriously believe that Number Twelve is standing before you? Ruby red, with G major, the magic of the raven, brings the Circle of Twelve home into safe haven. Do you believe that?”
“Well, there’s always the possibility,” said Mr. George. “Although your motives strike me as more than mixed, Mrs. Shepherd. ”
“That’s your problem,” said Mum coolly.
“If you really wanted to protect your child, then you ought not to have left her in ignorance for so many years. Time traveling without preparation is very dangerous. ”
Mum bit her lip. “I just hoped it would be Charlotte who—”
“And so it is!” cried Aunt Glenda. “She’s had obvious symptoms for the last two days. It could happen any time now. Perhaps it’s happening at this very moment while we waste our time here listening to my jealous little sister’s totally outrageous stories. ”
“Maybe you could switch your brain into gear for a change, Glenda,” said Mum. Suddenly she sounded tired. “Why on earth would we invent such a thing? Who but you would willingly wish something of this kind on her own daughter?”
“I insist on…” But Aunt Glenda left whatever she insisted on hanging in the air. “This will all turn out to be a wicked deception. There’s already been sabotage, and we know where that led, Mr. George. And now that we’re so close to achieving our aims, we really can’t make such a terrible mistake again. ”
“I don’t think that’s for us to decide,” said Mr. George. “Please follow me, Mrs. Shepherd. You too, Gwyneth. ” He added, with a little smile, “Don’t worry, those fanatical mystery mongers and pseudoscientists obsessed with esoteric subjects don’t bite. ”
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, SONNET XIX
SEVEN
WE WERE LED UP a staircase and down a long corridor with sharp angles at every turn, and now and then went up or down a couple of steps. The view from the few windows we passed was different every time. Sometimes we looked out into a large garden, sometimes at another building or a small dark alley. It seemed like an endless journey over wooden parquet and mosaic stone floors, past closed doors, and along lines of chairs, framed oil paintings, and glass-fronted cases full of leather-bound books and porcelain figurines, with statues and suits of armor standing just about everywhere. It was like being in a museum.
Aun
t Glenda kept casting venomous glances at Mum. As for Mum, she ignored her sister as best she could. Mum was pale and looked extremely tense. I wanted to take her hand, but then Aunt Glenda would have seen how frightened I was, and that was the last thing I wanted.
We couldn’t possibly still have been in the same building. I felt that we’d been through at least three more by the time Mr. George finally stopped and knocked at an enormous wooden door.
The large room we entered was paneled in dark wood, like our dining room at home. The ceiling was dark wood as well. But here everything was almost entirely covered with elaborate carvings, some of them painted. The furniture was dark and massive. The atmosphere ought to have been gloomy and sinister, but daylight was streaming into the room through the tall windows, and you looked out at a garden full of flowers. I could even see the Thames shimmering in the sunlight where the garden ended.
But it wasn’t just the view and the light that brightened the place, there was something cheerful about the carvings, in spite of a few ugly grimaces and skulls. It was as if the walls were alive. Lesley would have loved feeling the real-looking rosebuds, the archaic patterns, and the amusing animal heads and searching them for secret mechanisms. There were winged lions, falcons, stars, suns and planets, dragons, unicorns, elves, fairies, trees, and ships, each carving more lifelike than the one before it.
Most impressive of all was the dragon, which seemed to be flying across the ceiling above us. He must have been at least seven yards long from the tip of his wedge-shaped tail to his large, scaly head, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. What a wonderful dragon! I was so spellbound that I almost forgot why we were there … or that we weren’t alone. Everyone seemed completely surprised to see us.
“It looks as if there are some complications,” said Mr. George.
Lady Arista, standing stiff as a board by one of the windows, said, “Grace! Oughtn’t you to be at work? And Gwyneth should be at school!”
“There’s nowhere we’d sooner be, Mother,” said Mum.
Charlotte was sitting on a sofa right under a beautiful mermaid. Each scale in the mermaid’s tail was finely carved and painted in every imaginable shade of blue and turquoise. A man in an elegant black suit, wearing black-framed glasses, was leaning against a broad mantelpiece. Even his tie was black. He was examining us with a distinctly gloomy expression, and there was a little boy of about seven clinging to his jacket.
“Grace!” A tall man rose from the desk. He had gray, wavy hair that fell to his broad shoulders like a lion’s mane. His eyes were a strikingly light brown, almost the color of amber. His face was much younger than you might have expected from the gray hair that framed it. There was something fascinating about him—once seen, never forgotten, I felt sure. When the man smiled, you could see his regular white teeth. “Grace. It’s been a long time. ” He came around the desk and offered Mum his hand. “You haven’t changed at all. ”